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Jan 20 2018

Saturday – My First Row on Zwift

On Friday, I came home from work and wasn’t really in the mood or shape for a workout. I decided for a rest day. I finished some stuff on the rowsandall.com site, and then opened a bottle of wine and had a nice evening with Romana and the kids. We flipped through some old photo albums. Some rowing albums from my juniors and U23 days.

Today, I had time enough for a longer steady state row, and I decided to finally try and get PainSled and Zwift to communicate.

It turned out to be a no-brainer. I ran PainSled on the iPhone and Zwift on the iPad. In the Zwift app, the iPhone shows up as a iPhone Power Source, which you select.

I selected a ride that was called “Paris – Roubaix” and expected to be riding through Paris and the North of France. Instead, I was dropped in an artificial landscape where coast, mountains and city are all very close together.

Lots of riders around. Not the usual emptiness of RowPro land. I stopped the row at one point for a screenshot, but the empty road in front of me is not really representative.

PainSled seems to increase the power it sends to Zwift. While my PM was showing 190-200W, Zwift was reporting 220-240W and I seemed to be faster than most riders.

I finished much faster than the predicted 60 minutes, so I did two rounds, amounting to 50 “km” on Zwift and almost 20km on the PM.

The Polar OH1 had some funny behavior in the first five minutes of the row.

I couldn’t help but try and ride with a guy in an orange Jersey with the text “Ride is on”, so that explains the higher Watts around 40 minutes. And again, in the final part of the ride, there was a guy in a green jersey doing the same thing.

Anyway, the row/ride was big fun. There were a few riders around with approximately the same speed, so there was some interaction ongoing. Those other guys are training on bike trainers, I presume, so for them it was a little easier to interact with the app. I just rowed. The others were throwing around “thumb-ups” and short chat messages.

It was also nice to see the landscape change and go through turns. I didn’t lean to one side on the erg in the turns, though.

A good way to make the time go by fast. I may do another one tomorrow.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training, zwift

Jan 20 2018

Thursday – 500m intervals

This was a long and hard day at work, and that was the reason why I swapped workouts on the plan. Instead of an unstructured, long, steady state row I opted for the Friday’s intervals. There is something about a structured workout, especially when it is written by our head trainer and our club’s other Masters are doing it as well, that makes me finish it even when tired.

2x(10x500m/70″) @ 26spm; 6-8 minutes between the 2 sets

Workout Summary - media/20180118-2037080o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06915|30:15.0|02:11.3|205.4|24.3|161.6|177.0|09.4 W-|05000|18:32.0|01:51.3|254.5|25.9|160.0|177.0|10.4 R-|01919|11:43.0|03:03.3|097.4|19.9|164.5|177.0|01.5 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00500|01:50.7|01:50.7|248.1|25.8|141.8|166.0|10.5 01|00500|01:52.3|01:52.3|258.2|26.1|160.3|172.0|10.2 02|00500|01:51.3|01:51.3|254.2|26.3|160.2|173.0|10.2 03|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|253.8|25.5|158.1|172.0|10.6 04|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|256.0|26.3|161.9|175.0|10.3 05|00500|01:51.6|01:51.6|254.1|25.6|164.4|176.0|10.5 06|00500|01:51.2|01:51.2|255.7|25.9|167.2|177.0|10.4 07|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|256.7|25.5|164.4|172.0|10.6 08|00500|01:51.5|01:51.5|252.0|26.2|161.8|174.0|10.3 09|00500|01:51.0|01:51.0|256.4|26.1|159.5|168.0|10.4

Workout Summary - media/20180118-2036440o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|06692|30:09.0|02:15.2|200.8|23.4|158.1|174.0|09.5 W-|05000|18:28.0|01:50.9|256.2|25.4|156.1|174.0|10.6 R-|01698|11:41.0|03:26.5|059.2|17.6|163.6|174.0|02.6 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00500|01:49.7|01:49.7|249.9|25.0|138.6|152.0|10.9 01|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|254.0|24.6|154.7|161.0|11.0 02|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|257.9|25.2|159.7|170.0|10.7 03|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|252.7|25.7|162.0|174.0|10.5 04|00500|01:51.3|01:51.3|256.7|25.4|158.3|165.0|10.6 05|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|256.9|26.1|156.5|165.0|10.2 06|00500|01:50.9|01:50.9|255.2|25.6|153.2|158.0|10.6 07|00500|01:50.6|01:50.6|259.4|25.5|161.1|167.0|10.6 08|00500|01:51.1|01:51.1|257.0|25.6|157.2|165.0|10.5 09|00500|01:49.1|01:49.1|262.7|25.9|159.3|167.0|10.6

I was happy to do the second series a tad faster than the first one. I also adhered pretty well to the 26 spm rate restriction. The rate restriction allowed me to focus on technique, especially sitting up straight and taking time during the recovery. Nice.

A did a 2km warming up, rowed 1200m between the sets and did a 2k cooling down, so all in all I rowed almost 17km. Nice.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, intervals, OTE, rowing, threshold, training

Jan 20 2018

Wednesday – Swim

Another swim with the Polar OH1 heart rate (upper arm) band.

Nice recovery workout, in principle. In practice, it was a little hard because it was the just 10 hours after a pretty hard workout.

Romana and I were talking about how girls/women’s rowing is growing at our club. As the girls/women trainer, Romana is happy of course. On the picture above, you can see part of the group. A week from now, I will join them on the annual cross country ski training camp in the nearby Jesenik mountains. I am sure it will be a great week, and as I will help out and be responsible for the “fast” group, I will get to do a lot of workouts. Looking forward to it.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: crosstraining, rowing, swimming, training

Jan 14 2018

Sunday – a swim

Just a recovery swim. I am blogging about it because I tested the Polar OH1 in the pool and it worked really well. Here is the workout it recorded, on TrainingPeaks:

http://tpks.ws/cL6x7

So finally I know how hard I am working while swimming. 120 to 130 beats per minute. I didn’t swim really hard today, but still it is a bit lower than I expected. Good to know. Swimming is a light workout.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: cross-training, swim, training

Jan 14 2018

Friday – remaining ranking distances

In the morning, during short breaks from finalizing this year’s performance assessments for my group, I worked down a long checklist to release and publish about the latest and greatest on rowsandall.com.

Here are some articles about the new Ranking Functionality:

Tutorial article for the ranking functionality
Long read discussing some of the statistics behind the functionality

After that, I took the train home. Before going to the erg basement, I visited the Honda dealer close to my home. We’ve been contemplating getting rid of one of the cars (Romana’s Skoda Fabia), keeping only one as a “family car”. The idea would be to get a scooter for those rides around our town that cannot be done on the bike.

A typical round that I do in the OTW season is

Home – work (15km)
Work – Lake (18 to 25km depending on the route)
Lake – Home (12km)

A scooter would save fuel and usually be faster through the traffic. I still have to get used to the idea though. The issue for us Masters rowers is that we still believe we look like this:

While the reality is this:

Anyway …

The workout for the day wasn’t really a workout. After Thursday’s rest day, Friday was meant to be both a confidence booster (for Saturday’s 2k erg race) and a way to get two of the remaining ranking distances out of the way. So I did:

2km warming up
500m at target power 430W or higher
2km rest paddle
100m full out
2km cooling down

I managed the 500 in 1:33.4, which is a nice score. As you can see from the chart, power was oscillating between 440 and 460W, and it started to drop when the wheels came off in the final 150m.

Then I did a 2km paddle followed by a 100m at a slightly higher drag factor, which I managed around 600W. This resulted in the following series of ranking pieces rowed this season:

The only piece missing is a standalone 1 minute effort, which I will do soon.

The other interesting thing is that the 500m piece looks like the best of the series. The 100m piece average is below 600W because it takes too many strokes to get up to 600.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 100m, 500m, concept2, ergometer, ranking, rowing, training

Jan 9 2018

Steady State, Swim, 1k erg and some Math

This is going to be a very brief summary of the past three days of training, plus some math related to a big upgrade planned for rowsandall.com.

Sunday

Steady state at the rowing club. As the others were doing some 10 minute intervals, with increasing intensity during the 10 minute, my steady state was reflecting that, at a milder intensity and a less steep power increase.

One hour in total.

Monday

A long day at work and meetings late into the evening. So I went swimming in the morning. I wore the Tickr X heart rate belt, which has an internal memory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t record heart rate well in the pool. The summary said total time 78 minutes (correct), maximum heart rate 161 bpm (could be right), average heart rate 109 bpm (definitely wrong). I think the average is somewhere around 140-145 bpm.

Tuesday

Another long day at work, then a quick dinner, followed by a 1k full out. Twenty five minutes of warming up. Ten minutes of cooling down. My volume is decreasing as a taper for Saturday’s race.

Funny heart rate values. I don’t believe them much.

Workout Summary - media/20180109-1905300o.csv --|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg --|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS --|01000|03:21.4|01:40.7|339.2|31.1|158.2|178.0|09.6 W-|01000|03:21.4|01:40.7|339.4|31.1|159.0|178.0|09.7 R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|178.0|00.0 Workout Details #-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS- 00|00094|00:18.0|01:36.0|294.6|27.6|114.3|119.0|11.3 01|00094|00:19.1|01:42.0|329.1|30.8|131.7|145.0|09.5 02|00107|00:21.7|01:41.3|337.3|30.7|161.9|170.0|09.6 03|00097|00:19.6|01:40.9|339.1|30.8|173.3|175.0|09.7 04|00096|00:19.6|01:41.5|334.5|30.2|176.8|178.0|09.8 05|00107|00:21.7|01:41.1|337.6|30.4|175.8|177.0|09.8 06|00095|00:19.1|01:40.4|346.8|31.0|165.1|172.0|09.6 07|00103|00:20.6|01:40.2|347.8|31.7|161.0|161.0|09.4 08|00096|00:19.1|01:39.4|354.2|32.2|161.8|162.0|09.4 09|00111|00:22.1|01:39.4|366.5|34.6|161.3|162.0|08.7

Well, that was better than expected. I aimed for 330-335W. Not bad for a regular weekday evening, after a long workday.

Finally, Some Math

In case you want to find the highest average power interval of a certain duration in a workout, or perhaps all “fastest” intervals for all interval lengths, you can use the following.

Your workout data is a series of metrics measured at equidistant times $\bf{t} = [ t_1 \, t_2 \dots t_{n-1} \, t_n]$ . Similar to the time vector $\bf{t}$ there is a power vector $\bf{P}$ . Calculate the vector $\bf{G}$ given by:

$G_j = \sum_{i=1}^{j-1} P_i$

We then calculate a matrix $\bf{D}$ :

$D_{nm} = G_n - G_m$

The average power for an interval starting at $t_n$ and ending at $t_m$ is then given by:

$\bar{P}_{nm} = \frac{D_{nm}}{t_m - t_n}$ .

If $\bar{P}_i$ represents the $i$ th diagonal of $\bf{\bar{P}}$ , counting from 0, the 0th diagonal being “the” diagonal

$\bar{P}_0 = [\bar{P}_{00} \, \bar{P}_{11} \dots \bar{P}_{n,n} \, \bar{P}_{n+1,n+1}]$ ,

and

$\bar{P}_1 = [\bar{P}_{10} \, \bar{P}_{21} \dots \bar{P}_{n,n-1} \, \bar{P}_{n+1,n}]$

then this vector represents all values of the average power for a time segment of duration $i \Delta t$ . Then you simply take maximum value of this vector.

When written like this, the calculation is just a few lines of code, with the help of the numpy library.

So now you know what we do to your rowing data.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0

Jan 2 2018

Rowing by numbers – big fun

A steady state row.

To make it a bit more interesting, I added a mental arithmetic challenge.

After 1000m of rowing, I took the power of the stroke at which I crossed 1000m, in Watts, and subtracted 100. I multiplied that number by my heart rate minus 100.

I got

188-100 = 88
128-100 = 29
------------ x
        3534

So I rowed to 3534m, where I did the same arithmetic with the value at that moment:

3534 + (97x56) = 8964

So I rowed to 8964m, where I had to calculate:

8964 + (86x62) = 14196

In fact, I made errors on all the calculations, so the numbers above are just as an example (although the meter values are approximately right).

Anyway, it was good fun and I realized I need to restore my mental math skills. I am pretty good at estimating and I used to be slightly faster than gents with calculators, back when I was a Ph.D. student and estimating skills and mental arithmetic were a handy skill to have have.

Yes, I do realize that this is not everybody’s idea of fun, but it works for me. The hour was over in no time.

By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: concept2, erg, OTE, rowing, steady state, training

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Uncategorized

Saturday – My First Row on Zwift

Thursday – 500m intervals

Wednesday – Swim

Sunday – a swim

Friday – remaining ranking distances

Steady State, Swim, 1k erg and some Math

Rowing by numbers – big fun

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